A Reminder: Chronic Care Should Be the Focus of Medicare Reform 8/8/2003
Yesterday's Washington Post Column by Eric DeJonge and Bruce Leff (below) points out the importance of reforming Medicare for improved chronic care. This means not only adding new chronic care programs, but also an expanded role for comprehensive health plans like HMOs and PPOs, which have incentives to provide the full scope of benefits needed by seniors with chronic illnesses. (By contrast, stand-alone drug benefits -- like those proposed for Medicare in the House- and Senate-passed Medicare bills -- would further fragment seniors' care, and could reduce incentives for coordinated chronic care.)
Centrists.Org Helpful Chronic Care Initiatives in the Medicare Bills (July 22, 2003)
CentristPolicyNetwork.Org 2003 Medicare and Prescription Drug Resource Page (updated August 8, 2003)
A Real Medicare Remedy
The Washington Post
By Eric DeJonge and Bruce Leff
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A21
Most of the attention paid to Medicare in recent months has been focused on a prescription drug benefit, currently the subject of contention between the House and Senate. But as important (and expensive) as that program may prove to be, it does not get at the fundamental problems in the nation's health care plan for the elderly.
The management of chronic illness is now the paramount issue for Medicare. Progress in medicine has helped lengthen the lives of people who suffer with such chronic illnesses as diabetes, hypertension and heart failure. The U.S. health care system, built around facilities and high-tech procedures, provides fragmented care and is poorly structured to meet the chronic care needs of senior citizens....
Full Article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26191-2003Aug6.html
Eric DeJonge is director of geriatrics and co-director of the Medical House Call Program at the Washington Hospital Center. Bruce Leff, a geriatrician, is an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
